JMC writes:
> 2) 4 out of 5 scholars agree that poetry was, until the Renaisance, either
> spoken or sung. Poetry was listened to rather than read. Poets like George
> Herbert and e.e cummings make much out of the fact that poetry can also
> be something visual. So my point is--poetry isn't all about words. The
> meaning's in the presentation--in the emphasis.
The first part of this seems to me spot on, but I reach a slightly different
conclusion. I wouldn't want to disparage visual poetry like cummings or the
concrete poets of the 60s, but the crucial thing is that poetry is meant to
be spoken (or chanted) and heard, and its acoustic and musical qualities
realised through the voice.
A little later, however, on another topic, he writes:
> Another generalization: We don't care how people with camaras [sic]
behave:
> Whether people are being tortured, raped, or butchered or whether they're
> being caught on tape, so long as the recorded activity isn't private, we
> typically place no onus on the "reporter" . . .. unless, fo course, the
> recording gets caught in a legal nexus.
I cannot agree with this at all. It does matter. Absolutely. The 'reporter'
carries a very heavy moral burden. Here's an example. A couple of days ago
the BBC's Brian Barron reported from Zimbabwe. His took his camera team into
the besieged house of one of the white ex-colonial farmers whose farm was
under threat of expropriation. The report, in which he played the old role
of the reporter as hero, showed Zimbabweans amassing outside the gates, and
repeated the innuendo of violent terror and 'ethnic cleansing' and all that
stuff. Now I don't know much about what is going on in Zimbabwe, but a crowd
of many dozens like that does not wait outside the gates in an orderly
fashion while their leader negotiates with the farmer if they're an unruly
mob intent on murder. The irony is that what the image showed was a
political action being carried out by people who are clearly highly
disciplined, but the reporter and the way the report was put together was
frankly racist. This kind of thing is unfortunately all too common, and is
enough to make me doubt JMC's moral reasoning.
Michael Chanan
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